Despite any confidence we expressed about Firefox Quantum's ability to regain popularity as a desktop browser, its market share has continued to decline and has dipped below 10% for the first time.

The latest figures from NetMarketShare show that at the end of May Firefox had 9.92 % of the desktop browser market. It has been a while since we last contemplated the relative positions of the main desktop browers so we took a look at the last two years:

The trends seem remarkably consistent - Chrome steadily increases its share. Internet Explorer and Firefox are in very slow decline and Edge, although almost edged off the chart has seen an almost imperceptible gain. 

From this chart you might be led into thinking that nothing much had happened in the world of browsers. Not so. In November 2017 Mozilla launched Firefox Quantum, both faster and more stable than earlier versions and which offered the prospect of winning back lapsed Firefox users.

So has anything happened? The best (from the point of view of Firefox) is that Chrome's rate of increase might have been slowed:

Over the past six months Firefox has lost 1.5%. This compares to Internet Explorer losing only 0.2%. Edge has gained 0.05% and Chrome has gained more than 2.2% (some of it at the expense of other browsers such as Safari, not included in the chart).

Having 10% of the desktop browser market still means a lot of users, and Firefox still occupies an important niche - as Mozilla's promotion for Firefox 57 put it:

"More fast more good"

For many users, and I count myself here, Firefox is the superior browser - it is relatively fast and it is stable. But while I use Firefox in situations where speed and stability matter I don't use it as my default browser. In the period when Firefox was flakey I'd moved to Chrome and now Chrome has me shackled, It is Chrome that knows my passwords - including many I've forgotten - and so when I want to access my email or sites that are important to me it's just too convenient not to fire up Chrome. When you throw in the ability to translate websites then its a clear winner. As a Windows 10 user I even use Edge on an almost daily, although entirely accidental, basis. 

So can Firefox ever fight back in terms of market share. Each new update has welcome features - including WebAuthn in Firefox 60 which could make passwords a thing of the past and pave my route back to Firefox as my default browser.

Let's hope next time we look at the NetMarketShare charts the situation will have seem some movement.

More Information

NetMarketShare - Browser Market Share 

Related Articles

Firefox Quantum - Fast For Good

Firefox 60 Supports WebAuthn

Chrome Declared Winner

Edge Still Being Edged Out

Firefox Losing Share As Desktop Browser

 

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